Part of the Global Plot to Expose Moonbats, conspiracy nuts, and anti-Semites, especially the Jewish anti-Semitic variety.
The leftwing Neo-Nazi web magazine Counterpunch has described Plaut thus: "One of the most pernicious writers is Steven Plaut, a man who could be thought of as Israel's Daniel Pipes."

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

K-K-K-Katya - Katyusha Math

1. Katyusha Math

So let's do some math. The Hezbollah savages fired 4000 katyushas andother rockets into Israel. These killed 41 civilians. 18 of those wereArabs, people the Hezbollah obviously was not trying to hit. That leaves23 Jews. That is a kill ratio of about one Jew murdered per 200 rockets.

The katyusha had been the most effective weapon of the Red Army in WorldWar II and it would not be much of an exaggeration to say that it was whatdefeated the Wehrmacht. In Israel, it mainly created emotional stress andhigh blood pressure.

That was the weapon that Ehud Barak and his parody of Dunkirk had raineddown upon Israel. Loaded up with ball bearings to create maximum civiliancarnage.

But in the end, the super-weapon of terror killed un a month fewer peoplethan a normal month's worth of highway accidents in Israel. Anoccupational hazard of economists is a knowledge of statistics. Those whoasked me how I got through the katyushas now know the secret .statistically speaking, there was no more reason to fear them than fearinga ride on the highway in Israel. One does not live one's life inperpetual fear of other drivers, so why get stressed out by katyushas?Really.

Nevertheless, I believe a collective "Birkat Hagomel" (blessing for beingsaved from danger) is in order.

The katyusha today is effective mainly in terrorizing children and oldpeople. And in shutting down civilian activity (and damaging theeconomy). My guess is that the Iranian missiles are even less of aserious weapon (unless loaded with nukes).

[Remember that old song K-K-K-Katie from the 20s? You more creative typesare invited to do an update, called K-K-K-Katya (Katyusha)]

2. The Israeli media is quickly reverting to leftist defeatism.

Here is Amira Hass in Haaretz:http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/750978.html"On the one hand, the Israeli who "doesn't intend" cuts himself off fromthe Israeli occupation and colonialism machine, and exempts himself fromthe responsibility for the intention to harm Palestinian civilians, anintention that is inherent in the very existence of an occupationmachinery. And on the other hand, he cuts the Palestinian response offfrom the existence of the occupation machine: After all, they asindividuals and as a collective "intended to harm civilians," and thisbecause of their eternal essence as Muslims, as Arabs - which isindependent of us."

3. But one of the silliest fetishes of the media this week is thematter of General Dan Halutz's stock holdings.

Let me explain. It seems that just before the war, Halutz, the Commanderin Chief of the Army, sold some stock shares, and when the war started thestock market at first dropped 8% although quickly rebounded. The mediahas made this a banner scandal. Israel's version of Enron?

Yawn.

Let me emphasize that I do not like Halutz and think he mucked up theentire war and should be forced to resign due to Israel's failure in thewar.

Let me also say that I disagree with the chattering media moral posturersand am not convinced there is any substance to the stock sell-off story atall.

First, Halutz's entire stock portfolio was about $25,000. To think thathe sold it off in order to capitalize on insider information about the waris far-fetched. It would have saved him from maybe a $2000 capital loss,which he would have made up the following week when the stock exchangerebounded. If he had done short sales for a million dollars, or even ifhe would have sold the portfolio and then repurchased it within the week,it would be more suspicious.

Second, the accusation that he utilized insider information to make apathetic two grand is to attribute to him economic savvy and shrewdnessthat I really doubt he has.

Third, the balance he had was so small that selling it off could explainedby a mere desire to buy a used car for a kid.

True, like Caesar's wife, generals should avoid even the appearance ofimpropriety. And true, Halutz should resign for OTHER reasons, namelydisplaying incompetence as a general.

But get a grip!

4. The New Anti-Semitismby Jonathan RosenblumMishpachaAugust 16, 2006

Israel.s wars tend to bring anti-Semites out into the open, and thecurrent one is no exception. What is interesting, however, is the degreeto which anti-Semitism has migrated from its traditional haunts on theRight to the Left.

Sure one still finds traces the older Jew-hatred among Catholictraditionalists like actor Mel Gibson and pundit Pat Buchanan. But morefascinating is the social acceptability of anti-Semitic talk on the Left.

Lanny Davis, former special counsel to President Bill Clinton, cites inthe Wall Street Journal, an unappetizing sampler of comments posted on thewebsites supporting Ned Lamont over Senator Joseph Lieberman in lastweek.s Democratic primary in Connecticut. One blogger calls for Lamont to"define what it means to be an American who is NOT beholden to the IsraeliLobby." Another adds, "As everybody knows, Jews care ONLY about otherJews," and urges readers to ignore "Jewish propaganda about participatingin the civil rights movement of the .60s."

Still another made fun of Lieberman for not shaving during the ThreeWeeks, and suggested he dye his beard "blood red." "Lieberman is a . . .religious bigot," opined another Daily Kos reader; "Lieberman cannotescape the religious bond he represents. . . . [H]is wife.s name isHaggadah . . . or Diaspora or something you eat at Passover," reads onepost at Huffington Post. .

When it comes to vitriolic hatred of Jews and Israel, however, theAmerican Left cannot compare to the European. Few European newspapers willever again make the mistake of publishing a cartoon noting the fatalattraction of followers of Mohammed for suicide bombs. But cartoonsequating Israelis to Nazis are commonplace.

Jostein Gaarder, one of Europe.s best-selling novelists, employed all theclassical anti-Semitic tropes in a recent diatribe against Israel in theNorwegian daily Aftenposten. "To act as G-d.s Chosen People is not onlystupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity," he writes. "We do notbelieve in divine promises as a justification for occupation andapartheid. We have left the Middle Ages behind. . . . We laugh at thosewho still believe that G-d has selected one people in particular as Hisfavorite and given it silly, stone tablets, burning bushes, and a licenseto kill."

If Gaarder is like most of his countrymen, he probably has not seen theinside of a church in decades, but that does not prevent him from singingthe praises of Christianity over the beliefs of the Jews, with their tastefor the "blood vengeance that comes with an .eye for an eye and a toothfor a tooth.." "Two thousand years have passed since [Yoska] humanized theold rhetoric of war. . . . For two thousand years, we have rehearsed thesyllabus of humanism, but Israel doesn.t listen."

The state of Israel no longer exists, Gaarden proclaims triumphantly. Itis now without defense. In his Christian magnanimity, he calls for mercyon Israeli civilians as they prepare to enter yet another Diaspora.

Kenneth Roth, director of Human Rights Watch, resorts to same slur aboutprimitive Jewish bloodlust, by portraying Israeli bombing in Lebanon asmotivated by nothing other than a desire for revenge, and not as part ofan effort to protect Israeli civilians who have spent more than a month inbunkers under missile fire. "An eye for an eye . or more accurately inthis case twenty eyes for an eye . may have been the morality of some moreprimitive moment," Roth writes in condemnation of Israel.

Of course, anti-Semitism on the Left is not exactly a new phenomenon. KarlMarx himself was a master of anti-Semitic vitriol. And his follower Stalinwas planning a major bloodletting of Jews at the time of his death. Yetthere is something new in the hatred of Israel and Jews that needsexplanation.

QUITE SIMPLY, ISRAEL AND THE WARS THAT IT MUST CONTINUALLY FIGHT againstthose who have vowed to wipe it off the map, prevent Western intellectualsfrom engaging in their favorite fantasy: the belief in a completelyrational world, in which men of good will can iron out their differencesover the conference table without resort to violence. It is a worldviewthat denies the existence of irreconcilable goals, and sees all conflictin terms of interests that can be compromised.

There is no place in this worldview for Islamic jihad bent on subjugationof the entire world under Islamic law. So the world denies the threat,just as it once denied the threat of Hitler. Europeans prefer to believethat the jihadists are motivated by grievances that can be assuaged, justas they once imagined that Hitler would be satisfied if German"grievances" were answered and the Sudetenland returned.

It is terrifying to contemplate a nuclear Iran following the impeccablereligious logic of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in Iraniantextbooks: "[I]f the [infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion,we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until theannihilation of all of them. Either we will all become free or we will goto the greater freedom, which is martyrdom." Doesn.t leave much room fordeterrence through Mutual Assured Destruction does it?

And it is frightening to acknowledge that Islamic terrorism is notgenerated by any grievances, but because terrorizing the world givesMoslems power that they feel in no other sphere.

So the world prefers to ignore the source and nature of the threat. AfterCanadian police uncovered a plot to blow up Parliament and behead thePrime Minister, they reassuringly announced that the plotters were drawnfrom a broad cross-section of society . except, of course, for the factthat they were all named Mohammed or Ahmad. And similarly, Scotland Yard,after foiling a well-advanced plan to blow up ten planes over the Atlanticlast week, described the plotters only as of southeastern Asian ancestryand English-born, while omitting their jihadi motivation.

It is far more comforting to imagine that Islamic anger is fueled solelyby the Israeli "occupation" than to confront the worldwide scope of thejihadists. ambitions and the non-negotiability of their demands. If onlythe historical mistake of creating Israel in the first place, and the"anachronism" of a state based on religious identity . or at least onebased on Jewish identity . removed, then the rest of the world couldsimply sit down and discuss things rationally.

Israel.s crime is that it will not go along with the plan as peacefully asCzechoslovakia did.